Using robotics isn’t necessarily a new trick for law enforcement. In fact, CNN Money reported $55.2 million worth of military robots have been sold to law enforcement since 2010 through a government program. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, however, their functions are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Consider this: Often, forces will send in robots to investigate explosive devices to determine whether a threat is a valid one. Soon, however, experts expect police robots will be able to deactivate bombs in addition to aiding in their detection. This capability seems more than plausible when you consider Dallas police recently made history when they used a robot to kill an active shooter

Drones are used by the military and many law enforcement agencies for a variety of tasks. The drone in Figure 1, for example, is used by authorities in India to control crowds by spraying pepper spray and shooting paintballs. There’s more—it also has speakers so law enforcement can communicate with crowds or individual suspects in real-time. And, of course, it has surveillance capabilities including multiple cameras and a microphone. As interesting as that may be, it's significant that reconnaissance rambles fueled by Artificial Intelligence will soon have the capacity to foresee wrongdoings before they happen with apparatuses, for example, facial acknowledgment programming (to identify those with criminal records) and machine learning software (to determine when to report suspicious activity)

Scanning social media for illicit activity

Smartphone usage has soared in recent years, and that coupled with social media has revolutionized how both consumers and companies communicate. You can apply a social selling strategy to just about anything—even drugs, as it turns out. Sites like Instagram and even Tinder have been widely used for peddling paraphernalia, but, as The Daily Dot recently reported, police officers like those in New York State are cracking down using Artificial Intelligence. In fact, the New York Attorney General’s Office co-authored research on a new pre-investigative method, developing a sophisticated algorithm of classifiers that searches hashtags and recent activity indicative of drug dealing. Once a target is identified, the technology passes that information along to the physical enforcement team to investigate

Scanning social media for individuals who might be radicalized

There's another application for social and Artificial Intelligence that includes offering something unsafe—just this time, it's something one accepts, not ingests. The aforementioned Stanford report points out some law enforcement agencies are using Artificial Intelligence to monitor and analyze conversations in social platforms “to prevent those at risk from being radicalized by ISIS or other violent groups.” One such monitoring tool has been dubbed iAWACS, or internet AWACS. According to the Washington Post, that’s nod to the acronym used by the military to describe their airborne intelligence and command stations. The motivation behind iAWACS is to forestall occasions by observing on the web action characteristic of dynamic shooter circumstances or situations at high-chance for fanatics

Creating Interview ‘bots’ to detect lies from suspects

Researchers in the Netherlands have created an Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbot interviewer named Brad, designed to detect deception via physiological cues and machine learning algorithms. While Brad has a long way to go before he becomes mainstream, the implications of the technology as an initial screening tool has the potential to make law enforcement’s interviews more efficient and even improve security at high-risk areas like airports or sporting events

5 Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Law Enforcement
Reviewed by Adnor Company
on
September 19, 2017
Rating: 5